TSG109 After Action

Welcome to the TSG109 After Action Report thread. In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please state victory date and score (preferably in the post title), as recorded in the Hall of Fame, and the most important: your path to glory!

STOP - Please do not continue reading this thread until you have completed and submitted your game.

Please use the Civ5 game submission page to submit your final, first play through, .Civ5Save file, saved AFTER the victory ceremony if you were not conquered (using the "Lemme play one more turn" feature.).

- Did you use your UU's?
- Did you use spying to your advantage?
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How?
- Did you utilize Nobel Prize? How and why?

Well, played quite mediocre game - lost a lot of key wonders and also lost world games by 40 hammers to Poland! - all in all that slowed me down significantly.


To answer the questions:

- Did you use your UU's? - No, haven't ever built them
- Did you use spying to your advantage? - Yes, a lot, mainly for the coups in CSs
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how? - Map was OK and it haven't influenced the victory in my opinion
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions? - Since the difficulty is above emperor it's risky to go with SS strategy, so i decided to go for "normal" culture win
- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How? - In my case it haven't helped me much - but of course two late faith bought musicians shorten my victory time significantly
- Did you utilize Nobel Prize? How and why? - No, because i haven't popped any "useless" GP. Also playing this difficulty level you want to use coups, because almost any CS has an ally.

Beated the game in 1992 via a science victory. I used my civ bonus mid game to catch the congress, but after this, the ennemies decided to capture my city-states (which is not that stupid for an AI)... which obliged me to focus on science and war (especially nuke and megarobot).

- Did you use your UU's? Sure.. i wiped netherland with them.
- Did you use spying to your advantage? Not really... only used them to steal tech since I always focus on production early-game
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how? A2 player continent start is really good, but getting oversea was a bit tough
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions? WEll.. even on this difficulty, the Ai is mostly stupid
- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How? Yes really helped a lot early game since hapinness was the main issue for the growth of Sweden. Faith helped me bypass this unhapiness
- Did you utilize Nobel Prize? How and why? Mid-game, almost all the time to catch some CS and their luxuries (happiness purpose).. I kept my great general of course and gave any other great persons.

Dudumanne said:

Beated the game in 1992 via a science victory.

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Welcome to CivFanatics and GOTM!

Congrats on your win. Hope you have many more in future.

Started really well, but messed it up in the last part of the game. My open borders with Darius expired one turn before the last GM bomb so I waited 12 turns to catch up normally (wasn't sure if declaring war doesn't ruin the possibility to perform a concert tour - now I know it doesn't ) Also making more RAs and using rationalism finisher for internet would shorten the game a little bit. Could've finished around turn 300 easily

- Did you use your UU's?
Nope

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
Yes, made a lot of coups, which led to world ideology, which resulted in Arabia (culture leader) to convert from autocracy to freedom shortly before the end

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Slowed me down. Never managed to estabilish trade route to two cultural leaders (Arabia and Persia). Should've planted a city nearby, but was just too lazy

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Didn't even think about SS

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How?
Built SH right from the start and was first to find a religion. Easily covered all the CS and half of Williams cities and filled my cities with pagodas. That jumpstarted my culture and 30-40 gpt from tithe for the rest of the game helped as well.

- Did you utilize Nobel Prize? How and why?
Gifted almost spent prophet to Kiev for short lived alliance.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 109
Date submitted: 2015-05-05 22:39:24
Reference number: 32709
Your name: Olodune
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1550AD
Turns played: 220
Base score: 1387
Final score: 3152

Didn't plan on going to internet, but still a traditional builders game. No Futurism or sacred site shenanigans.

- Did you use your UU's?
Nope

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
Tried too. Some luck with coups. Two dead spies - probably slightly below expectation. I did take the double-catch-chance tenet in Order.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Obviously culture is a little slower with the extra continent. Salt helps get the ball rolling.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How?
Nice religion (tithe, pagodas, religious community). Bought two musicians in the final tourism push.

- Did you utilize Nobel Prize? How and why?
Gave a general to Monaco to help push into Rationalism and Aesthetics.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 109
Date submitted: 2015-05-06 00:59:26
Reference number: 32710
Your name: acken
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1440AD
Turns played: 204
Base score: 1241
Final score: 3102
Time played: 2:49:00

This was my first try for a futurism+hotel strategy so that was kind of an unexperienced try but I'm rather satisfied since I doubt I would have done much better in a normal game. I will be interested to see how people with more experience with that strategy manage this map. Maybe trying to pass international games as second resolution would have been good I don't know.

My culture runaway was Austria with around 11K at the time of victory. Mostly because it was hard to get it away from 1 or 2 cultural CS. Especially when my fresh level 3 spy died on the first coup... I hate rng.

Acken said:

Maybe trying to pass international games as second resolution would have been good I don't know.

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That's what I did this game. The problem with early IG is that it takes a lot of hammers. All my cities spent turns 196-206 pounding away. (Even with 5 cities + factories + a hydro plant). ~3.7k hammers . On Deity the AI will help out enough to cut that in half.

Persia was my runaway. Pictures later.

Some pictures and words, for those interested.

Also end game screen:

I'd be curious to hear more about how you won with a culture victory in just over 200 turns. I was doing fairly well when William marched in with 40 troops and surrounded my coastal cities with a dozen ships. I had to spend the next 30 turns defending myself and by then I was too far behind to win, so I retired from this one.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 109
Date submitted: 2015-05-07 18:01:00
Reference number: 32714
Your name: Maxerman
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1949AD
Turns played: 369
Base score: 1892
Final score: 2591

Wow, I don't know how you guys do it Acken and Olodune. This is only my second game of the month game and third ever BNW game to be fair, but still.


Questions:

- Did you use your UU's?
Nope, not at all.

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
No coups. Didn't need to. Allied with everyone anyway. Stole some techs from William and Darius but mostly used as diplomats on same two and then Pedro, Suleiman, and Maria as well.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Was really tough reaching Darius and Haile with Tourism. Me and Darius became such good buddies and I performed so many concerts in Persia that it worked out anyway once Haile had been annihilated.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How?
Religion helped make money above all else with Tithe, and used that money to buy all the city states. Also bought two writers to defend against Darius tourism and three musicians in the final tourism push against Darius.

- Did you utilize Nobel Prize? How and why?
Gave a GW to Monaco really early in the game that I couldn't use. Otherwise, didn't need to.


Start:

After what I thought was a pretty good start; 5 cities at turn 101 (settling by river/Uluru, S coast, far SE coast and E coast) and wonders GL, Parthenon, Mauseoleum of Halicarnassus, Pyramids, Oracle and Petra, I started falling behind in tech a little bit and struggling with happiness. Seems like it would have been better to go Tradition rather than Liberty and steal workers rather than build them and build Pyramids. Also NC came way too late.


Summary:

Social Policies: Liberty - Aesthetics - Exploration - Order

Religion: God-King, Tithe, Religious Art, Swords into Plowshares, Itinerant Preachers (biggest religion throughout large part of the game occupying entire small island)

Diplomacy: Kick ass! Friends with all civs and city-states, except when annihilating Kasimir and Haile.

Wonders: GL, Pyramids, Mausoleum, Oracle, Parthenon, Petra, Machu Pichu, Neuchwenstein, Kremlin (really quite bad after the start)

Military: 3 units (until last 40 turns when I built like 40 Rocket Artilleries)


Long Story:

Opted for a very peaceful game with DOF with William, Pedro and Kasimir already around turn 100 as well, and lasted throughout the entire game. Gifted everyone things to make everyone as happy with me as possible. That way, I went almost the entire game on just 3 military units.

The many research agreements with all of them and Maria and Suleiman as well once I met them allowed me to almost keep up with research, and get a 50-60% great person bonus for most of the game. With Darius joining the great alliance later on, after a short period of dislike towards me after I used a spy to steal a few techs.

However, being behind on tech I missed out on several important wonders and I tried but couldn't seem to get happiness quite under control. So my cities didn't grow until very late at which point tech started picking up again, and could finally start building stuff faster in my 4th and 5th cities and start building all the national wonders.

Haile and Darius had quite a lot more culture than I had and Darius was the one picking up most of the tourism wonders as well. It looked like Darius might be the one to win a cultural victory for a while. On top of that I lost out in the international games to William.

Things started to look a little brighter when my cities started to grow, started earning 300+ gold per turn and ended up buying the love of all the CS left on the map, not already taken by Maria. William started as the powerhouse of the congress but after helping Pedro become host, I then took it for myself and dominated it from there on. Having 35 delegates at the end with no one else having more than 12. Got world religion, world ideology, scholars in residence, and arts funding mainly.

All this diplomacy got me security (6 defensive pacts at once at one point), nice bonuses to tourism output and the congress. It was only Haile who never wanted to be my friend and he got almost comically ganged up on throughout the game. However, it was when everyone adopted Order (and I did for diplomatic reasons) and Haile adopted Freedom and Kasimir adopted Autocracy that the grand alliance started ganging up on Poland as well. It didn't take long when everyone declared war (me not helping so much with my 3 units) for him to become extinct. Then I realised that I didn't have to beat the culture output of the civs that were eliminated. (Keep in mind, a bit of a beginner at BNW)

I was influential with everyone except Darius and Haile already around 1700-1800AD. Darius was just a cultural stronghold and Haile, I had no bonuses with, in fact was at -34% most of the time with him. So the plan was to wipe out Haile and use the faith I'd been saving to buy 2-3 GM to use on Darius. The plan was good, exceeded Darius culture quite easily with 3 GM. Defended against Darius tourism by using archaeology and GWs to create culture. Built my army way too late and took ages to get them across to Haile. So spent an additional 30-40 turns just wiping Haile out. Even though all the others were at war with him as well.

In the end the biggest threat was Darius and William's potential science victories actually and they were both just once piece away and had all techs, (everyone did except Haile) but I just managed to snag the win.

Interestingly, I got reports constantly at the end about everyone plotting against me, but there was no backstabbing in the end.

Finished the game with only the 5 cities I already had at turn 101 now with populations:
27, 27, 33, 31, 27. Plus Poland gifted me Krakow in peace treaty and took final city Medina. Btw Darius finished the game with 36,000 gold, is that supposed to happen?


Hope someone reads my very long post, haha, and if so, thanks

How do you add screenshots in the post btw? Just added them as an attachment now if anyone is interested.

Sempronius said:

I'd be curious to hear more about how you won with a culture victory in just over 200 turns. I was doing fairly well when William marched in with 40 troops and surrounded my coastal cities with a dozen ships. I had to spend the next 30 turns defending myself and by then I was too far behind to win, so I retired from this one.

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William is usually friendly if you don't piss him off.

I just played a normal tradition + secularism 4 cities game for most of the game then switched toward refrigeration somewhere in renaissance. Burned scientists and oxford to get there and started to get hotels while getting Futurism and filling the guilds + finishing a few GWAM wonders.

In hindsight it may be better to get Radio first for a faster Ideology. The fast hotels weren't really useful until I had spammed a good amount of archeologists and finished aesthetics. I spawened a nice amount of GWAM after Futurism and once I was at 150 tourism, 2 faith bought GM finished the job.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 109
Date submitted: 2015-05-08 17:30:41
Reference number: 32715
Your name: XaW
Game status: Science Loss
Game date: 2001AD
Turns played: 421
Base score: 1348
Final score: 1348


Questions:

- Did you use your UU's?
Not much. Were mostly friendly with everyone so it wasn't needed.

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
Was friends with almost everyone, but stole a couple of techs. After that they were mostly diplomats to increase the culture.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
I struggled to get my culture to Arabia, since they were secluded to the lower west island. They also went all other ways in religion and ideology so they were the biggest isse for me.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How?
Yes. I managed to get my religion to be a world religion. As well as getting Holland to follow it completely. This led to Holland and me being BFFs throughout the game.

- Did you utilize Nobel Prize? How and why?
No. I tried it once, but screwed up somehow and didn't want to lose more.

The game started good, as Holland was a good trade partner. I managed to get my religion started quite early and influence Holland completely. From then on we are friends. After we started to explore more I also met Austria who were quite friendly themselves. We were progressing great until I made the probably biggest mistake using a Great Merchant. I tried to use him to take over Kiev in the big mainland to get a foothold there, but failed to notice they were protected by Peria and Brazil. This lead to the only war we had this game. Peria took Kiev right back, but that was the most of a war we had.

I managed to get my religion to be the world religion with the help of Holland, and after they went Freedom I thought I should follow. When Austria also joined we were a great alliance for the most of the game. After a while we also managed to get it to be World Ideology as well and this helped a lot.

Playing as Sweden I wanted to be inspired by their real world attitude. I wanted to be neutral, and be pasifistic thoughout. However, I wanted to work in the shadows and I instigated most of the wars thoughout the game. Usually between two of the major forces that might be problematic. This tactic worked quite well for the most part, including the destruction of Persia and Brazil by the hands of Austria. Persia was the other, along Arabia I struggled to influence so I took the alternative route.

In the end Austria grabbed the science win. I were 3 turns away from Poland, but 46 turns away from Arabia.

Anyway, a fun experience, but still no wins on Immortal for me....

Acken said:

Also end game screen:

Spoiler :

Click to expand...

Why does your screen look this way is it a Mod what version are you playing?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512263

At this point maybe GotM should officially state players can use this UI mod ?

Game: Civ5 GOTM 109
Date submitted: 2015-05-09 20:30:51
Reference number: 32719
Your name: Natex
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1937AD
Turns played: 357
Base score: 1288
Final score: 1814
Time played: 5:32:00
Submitted save: TSG 109.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Natex_C510901.Civ5Save

Helluva game. So many missed opportunities, screw ups, and just non-optimal play. Culture victory is my weakest game, so I was hoping I could do all right here.

Missed a few key wonders, but was doing pretty well. Darius was a runaway, so I manipulated Suleiman, Harun, and Maria to attack him, but they weren't finishing him off. I had to come in with ships to take his last city. This may have been a mistake. After I killed Darius, William and Harun started to hate me. William declared war, and took two of my 5 cities (1 puppet). Luckily I was able to scrape out the win before William finished me off. Narrow victory.

Acken said:

At this point maybe GotM should officially state players can use this UI mod ?

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I thought I had, in several threads.

But this is not the place for that discussion.

Acken said:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512263

At this point maybe GotM should officially state players can use this UI mod ?

Click to expand...

Thanks Acken

Well, I had no chance of winning this. I don't think I've ever beaten this game on Immortal. Maybe once when I only had a single opponent. I still uploaded my save file; I seem to be the only one who uploads failures. It's kind of nice to see my name all by itself on the bottom of the list.

I did manage to hold out until the end, when Otto got a science victory at turn 395. I researched Internet but it didn't help anything. The best I could manage was being... uh, whatever the level after exotic was... with two civilizations. Everyone else was exotic even though I sent Arabia a million concerts. Ho hum.

I was almost ruined after about 100 turns when William was smacking me around, but I asked him about terms for peace just before he took my capital. He asked for two cities, and I responded with nothing... and he accepted! What a weirdo. No one declared war on me after that.

- Did you use your UU's?
I had a few hockey polentas, or whatever those are called, because they were nicer than pikemen.

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
I stole a few technologies and influenced some city state elections.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Mountains were nice for observatories, but is that tied to the map type? I think since William and I were separated from most of the rest of the people it was harder to get tourism to the others, but I don't think I got much tourism with William anyway.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
I knew I wasn't going to win so I didn't sweat it much.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How?
Pfft, nope! I think every one of these games I've played has given us lots of salt, which is good for faith (also, it was nice to see that natural wonder that gave lots of faith), but by the time I had a religion all the good tenets were taken.

- Did you utilize Nobel Prize? How and why?
I'm pretty sure it was the reason all the AIs were friendly with me. I also gifted a few great people to city-states, because I'm foolish. When I was spreading religion with a great prophet and he had 1 charge left I'd give him away. This didn't really help much because Maria Theresa bought up most of the city-states. You'd think she'd run out of extended family to marry off.